Nairobi Governor launches DigitalMatatus Project at the ongoing CityLab London 2015 Conference

Nairobi Governor, Dr Evans Kidero, has launched DigitalMatatus at the ongoing CityLab London 2015 Conference.

The Digital Matatu project is set to leverage on the ubiquitous nature of cell phone technology in developing countries to collect data for essential infrastructure give it out freely and in the process spur innovation and improved services for citizens.

“Roughly 3.5 million people in Nairobi depend on matatus every day but have little information on the more than 130 different routes. Providing this information via Google Maps (as provided by Digitalmatatus) will not only increases accessibility to the transit system, but will serve as a model for how to create information on public transport. More importantly, this essential data will now be available for transportation planning initiatives in a city that struggles with congestion,” said Dr. Evans Kidero.

This joint effort involving the University of Nairobi, MIT, Columbia University, and Groupshot Design Consultancy will be a key player in the movement to make transportation in Nairobi City more efficient and open.

The project will capture transit data for Nairobi develop mobile routing applications and designed a new transit map for the city.

With new high quality data free and available the technology community has developed five mobile applications that provide routing information to the public. These include ma3route, Flashcast, sonar, digitalmatatu, matatumap and more recently developed transit apps.

The data maps and map apps are free and available to the public transforming the way people navigate and think about their transportation system.Currently, the transit map for Nairobi is being used by UN HABITAT to help guide the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) they are developing.